


it moves its slow thighs

by ineffmoth



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, dark themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-11
Updated: 2019-09-11
Packaged: 2020-10-14 18:48:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20605589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ineffmoth/pseuds/ineffmoth
Summary: John’s not sure what possessed him to willingly get into a car with his clearly insane boss, the CEO of Atlas, but it’s probably too late to turn back now. He just wishes Rhys would stop calling him Jack.Written for the 2019 Borderlands MiniBang.Also translated into Russian here: [link]





	it moves its slow thighs

One of John’s employees, Mathias Hoffman, tries to frame him for embezzlement.

He does a pretty shitty job. The money gets caught by an automatic failsafe, and a security check reveals a trail of poorly slapped together proxy servers with Mathias - like a kid using a hand puppet to pilfer the cookie jar - at the end.

Honestly, this kind of shoddy workmanship is pretty much why Mathias never got the promotion he’s so pissed about being passed over for in the first place. It’s a shame he ran off when he failed, John thinks. The two of them could’ve sat down and had a heart-to-heart.

“Listen, Matty,” John would’ve said. “I like you. I really do. And if you’d pulled this off, you would’ve deserved whatever it is you thought you were gonna get. But you’re an idiot, kiddo. You’re an idiot.”

Then he’d fire him, and maybe knock his teeth out, too, just to make a point. And to ease the knot of tension this whole fiasco has driven into the base of John’s spine like a hot nail. He’s never made the mistake of actually trusting anyone out here, but he’d thought he had this one under his thumb. Matty’s betrayal is unexpected, and that crumb of vulnerability sticks in John’s craw. It makes his skin itch.

But Mathias did run off. He didn’t take much with him, but he ran, leaving Atlas Security scratching their heads and then ultimately shrugging their shoulders in indifference. What’s one little pissant code monkey in the wind? Not exactly resolved, but not a justifiable use of resources either; Matty was gone. Time to move on. So John did. And as far as he was aware, so did everyone else.

Which is why, more than a week later, he’s a little disconcerted to see a summons to the CEO’s office arrive in his inbox. ‘That Whole Embezzlement Thing,’ reads the subject of the email, and the sender isn’t the secretary, or the secretary to the secretary, but the CEO of Atlas himself.

“Hey there,” the message starts. “Heard there was a bit of an awkward situation down in Programming last week. Could you come up to my office to talk about it at some point? Whenever you’re free.”

The crisp, carefully crafted letterhead that follows is jarring in contrast to the informal, apologetic contents of the message itself.

John taps his fingers on his desk and tries to decide what to do about the apprehension that’s slunk into him like an ominous fog. A smoke sounds like as good a plan as any, so he pulls his pack from his front shirt pocket and knocks one out, chews absently on the end as he fumbles with his lighter. When he finally gets a spark, he sits and lets the first inhale settle deep into him. Lets it take the edge off. Then he reads and rereads the message and tries to figure out why Rhys Strongfork cares.

_ Ten million dollars is a lot of money_, he thinks. _ But it’s gotta be chump change to the CEO, and none of it was actually stolen. So something else, then. _

It’s hard to get a read on Rhys, in general. John’s just the head of a little programming division, though, so it’s not like he’s had a wealth of opportunity. He’s seen him speak a couple times at conferences and special events, but besides that, just promotional material. John’s never been close enough to look him in the eye and really get his measure.

Probably for the best. John’s got theories about that one.

On the surface, he’s a real benevolent guy – all about cleaning up Pandora and making the borderlands hospitable to sane human beings. When Rhys first appeared at Atlas, though, the company was in dire straits. Pandora had been a bad venture. They were spread too thin, and the weight of it all had begun to bear down. Then, almost single-handedly, Rhys pulled Atlas from the jaws of annihilation. He crushed the competition, he opened the Vault of the Destroyer, and he brought the rabid population of Pandora to heel. He became CEO and returned the company to its former glory as an industry titan.

A man doesn’t do all that and walk away with entirely clean hands.

Rhys hides it pretty well. He’s got a sort of goofy charm and a baby face that’s hard to take seriously. In business, you might think of that as a disadvantage, but John suspects that being underestimated serves Rhys just fine. It’s almost like a magic trick: the way he lays out clear evidence of his ruthlessness and still gets people to do it, anyway. They even put him on the cover of Teen Space Beat recently, right next to Timothy Lawrence, like some kind of cute actor or pop star.

So maybe most people would have found the message in John’s inbox endearing. Casual and awkward, even though it’s from the CEO of Atlas. Maybe they would have seen opportunity there, a chance to get a foothold, to manipulate a naïve and nervous man with power. To get on top.

John, he’s got his reservations. He’s an ambitious man, with his eye on the corporate ladder. He knows his value, and it’s sure as shit somewhere above his current position. But some things are more trouble than they’re worth.

Also, Angel has a piano recital coming up in a few days, and he’d rather not miss it. Her Nocturne No. 1 is coming along nicely.

He smokes his cigarette down about half way before he decides it’s best to get this over with now, rather than draw it out and risk testing Rhys’ patience. In circumstances like these, ‘whenever you’re free’ can only be interpreted as ‘immediately.’ He stubs out the cherry in his ashtray – a lopsided, turtle-shaped dish from made in one of Angel’s art classes – and leaves the butt there for later. He’s got a feeling he’ll need it.

On his way across the Atlas compound, he remembers another thing about Rhys – his cybernetics. Allegedly, he had his functioning eye and arm voluntarily removed in order to improve his programming abilities. It’s one of those things that’s probably been exaggerated by rumor into myth – allegedly, there was no anesthesia; allegedly, he ripped his eye out himself – but the bare bones of it is grisly enough on its own.

John recalls this bit of information as he stands on a moving walkway, gliding briskly past banks of windows that overlook the sprawling campus and, further out, Pandora. Five, six years ago, the view would have been brown and empty. Now it’s flush with green, a verdant expanse of forests and rolling meadows, all thanks to Atlas terraforming. It’s lovely.

John wonders what Rhys had to rip out before he could put it in.

*

Rhys’ office is small. Intimate. One wall is painted with a large, red ‘A.’ The other is covered in framed photographs – Rhys shaking hands with old men in suits mostly – and awards for things like humanitarian efforts and excellence in weapon design. The irony does not escape John. He wonders if it escapes Rhys, or if it’s his idea of a joke.

Aside from a bank of low cabinets beneath a large window, there’s not much in the way of furnishings. Rhys has a broad desk carved from solid oak that takes up most of the space, and that really says it all. It probably cost more than the building its sitting in. There’s not much else a person needs to make their point. Well, that and a nice leather chair. But Rhys has one of those, too.

_ Art by Jack: [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/jacks_baptism_of_blood) | [Tumblr](jack-baptismofblood.tumblr.com) _

He’s sitting in it as John arrives, a king on his throne, all lazy, sprawled out power. He looks up from his computer at the sound of the door opening and locks eyes with John. Raw shock flashes across his face.

“Oh,” Rhys breathes.

John stops only a foot into the room. The hairs on the back of his neck stand on end and he instinctively glances over his shoulder to see if someone else has come in behind him. There’s no one there.

When he faces forward again, Rhys is scrutinizing him in silence. He stares openly, eyes roving over John in fascination, lingering here and there with clear interest. His right arm. The breast pocket with the cigarette pack inside. His face, most of all.

It’s enough to make John wish he’d worn something nicer to work today. He’s got on a white button up with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, his black tie pulled loose around the collar. His dark slacks are a little wrinkled and his dress shoes have seen better days. As head of a minor department, it’s enough. Compared to Rhys – in a pressed black suit and a blood red tie, cinched to the throat – he looks like a slob.

John clears his throat when the examination continues for long enough that he stops anticipating an end.

“You wanted to speak to me, boss?” he prompts.

Rhys’ eyes snap up to meet his again.

“You work for Atlas,” he says.

John glances around the room – at the huge, red ‘A’, and the photos, and the awards.

“Yeah,” he says, looking back at Rhys. “I do.”

“Not Hyperion,” Rhys says.

“…No.”

Hyperion hasn’t been a functioning company for close to eight years now. Atlas annihilated them. Actually, Rhys did, with the kind of brutal efficiency most civilized people reserve for criminals and rabid dogs. The idea of anyone working for Hyperion in this day and age is a joke at best. Their only extant employees they have any more are the scattered loader bots and cl4p-tp units that escaped decommissioning. And the ghosts. There are a lot of ghosts.

“What a universe,” Rhys says to himself.

John’s apprehension intensifies. He doesn’t like being wrong-footed like this, off-balance and unsure of the terrain.

“You wanted to talk to me about Matty?” he says, attempting to steer himself back into familiar waters.

“Who?” Rhys asks.

John squints at him.

“Mathias Hoffman - he tried to embezzle ten million dollars,” he says slowly. “And also tried to frame me for it. I was kinda under the impression that that’s why you called me here, boss.”

“Oh, right, him,” Rhys says. He stands up and crosses around, stopping in front of John. He’s taller, but only by an inch or two. “How does it feel? Being betrayed by your own employee?”

_ What kind of a bizarre fucking question is that? _John thinks.

Out loud he says, “I dunno. It’s kind of in the past at this point. He’s gone, so why waste energy being mad? I guess I’d be angrier if he’d gotten anywhere close to succeeding.”

Rhys’ brows furrow.

“Hm,” he says.

His eyes narrow even more, and then he leans forward suddenly, until his face is inches from John’s. This close, John can see that he’s more than just baby-faced. He’s pretty.

They’re both about the same age – nearly forty, but who’s counting – but Rhys has a strange agelessness to him, like a portrait of a man rather than the man himself. His face is free of lines, his dark lashes are full and long, and his skin looks soft, unbroken. The ECHOeye implant is an eerie bright yellow, like a cat’s, and the other bio eye is a deep brown. There’s something striking about the contrast, so unlike John’s own blue-green heterochromia.

Rhys is undeniably attractive. This close, John can’t help but be attracted.

Rhys leans back again, before John can decide what to do about that, and there’s fresh surprise on his face.

“You smoke,” he says.

“Yeah, sometimes,” John says. His skin prickles with a mixture of warning and arousal as he realizes Rhys was smelling him. “It’s a bad habit.”

“I didn’t know that,” Rhys says.

“What, that it’s a bad habit?” John asks. “It’ll give you cancer, kiddo.”

Rhys stares at him for a second. Then –

“Do you have any family, Jack?” he asks. “Wife? Kids?”

John hesitates. It could be a threat, which has his hackles up, except that there’s nothing to threaten him over – unless Rhys hates pet names that much, which is always possible. But he sounds casual enough.

This whole meeting seems like some kind of test, to be honest, the meaning and purpose of which is far beyond John’s understanding. He wonders whether he’d be better off passing or failing. He wonders if everyone who talks to Rhys feels this way, like they’re having two conversations at once, and one of them is happening in another language. Or another universe.

Finally, he says, “My name’s John.”

“Right,” Rhys says. “John. So?”

“…I’ve got a daughter,” John reluctantly admits.

“Oh yeah?” Rhys asks, with what sounds like feigned interest. “How old?”

“She just turned thirteen,” he says.

“Thirteen,” Rhys says. “Tough age. That’s when kids start rebelling, right? Doing dumb things like getting tattoos.”

“Angel’s a good kid,” John says tightly.

“No tattoos?”

“No tattoos.”

Rhys considers him for a moment, and then his features shift into amusement.

“Well,” he says. “Maybe that was just me.”

John’s eyes fall to the concentric circles on Rhys’ neck, the broken and the whole. The tattoo is partially hidden by the collar of his suit, cut off at the very bottom, like a sun rising up from the horizon. Rhys’ skin under the black ink is pale and smooth before it, too, disappears beneath his shirt. John’s fingers twitch a little at his side with the urge to pull that collar away and see that long neck in full, ink and all. He licks his lips and tears his gaze away, back up to Rhys’ face.

“Rebellious, huh?” he asks. “Is that your nature, boss?”

Rhys’ smile grows.

“Not really,” he says. “But the best rebels are those who were most obedient at first. What about you, Jack? Are you obedient?”

“It’s John,” John says again. “And, no, I don’t think I am.”

“I don’t think so, either,” Rhys says. “Which is why this is going to be so much fun. Are you free tonight?”

With a jolt, John realizes he may have misread this whole situation. The weird, out of the blue summons, the probing, personal questions, Rhys smelling him.

John knows he’s a good-looking man. He gets his fair share of attention, even at his age and with a smoking habit and a teenage kid. But if Rhys is hitting on him, it’s by far the strangest come-on John’s experienced. Especially since it’s his boss who can’t seem to get his extremely easy name right.

That simplifies things, though. Now that he has some idea of what’s going on here, he finally feels like he’s standing on solid ground. This is the kind of trouble he at least knows how to handle. More than that, he decides, eyeing the exposed strip of Rhys’ neck again. It’s the kind of trouble he wants.

“That depends what kind of counter-offer you can make,” he says. He juts out his chin so that he can look at Rhys down his nose and through his lashes.

Rhys frowns.

“I’ll compensate you, of course,” he says. “At the overtime rate.”

And John’s lost again.

“Okay, I’m confused,” he says, dropping his chin. “What is it exactly that you –”

“It won’t take long, I don’t think,” Rhys says. “It’s the travel that’s bothersome. Actually.” He pulls a clock display up on his cybernetic palm and checks the time. “We should probably leave now if we want to get there before the night cycle starts.”

John sighs.

_ Inscrutable bastard_, he thinks. _ He’s not planning on giving me any answers at all, is he? _

“Well, let’s get going, then,” he says, giving in.

*

Rhys’ car is a sleek, black thing, with an Atlas hood ornament and bulletproof tires. John is a little surprised when Rhys heads for the driver’s side door. He was expecting a chauffeur or some hulking bodyguard. Maybe that Athena chick who’s always hanging around behind Rhys at press conferences, the one who’s definitely, definitely not an assassin (but probably is).

Rhys notices John’s hesitation and gestures pointedly for the passenger side. John gets in and puts his seatbelt on. Rhys settles into the driver’s seat and neglects his own.

“I prefer to drive myself, when I can,” he explains. “Also, I’d rather not involve anyone else.”

“Oh, so this is the kind of thing you don’t want witnesses for,” John says, only half-joking.

Rhys winces and scratches shyly at the side of his face.

“Um, ‘witnesses’ is kind of…” he says. “It’s…a personal matter. That’s all.”

_ Does he even hear himself? _John thinks.

If this is how Rhys usually flirts, it’s painfully obvious why he’s still single. Which is a shame, given the face. And the legs. And the neck.

John drops his hand to the armrest in the passenger door and taps out a nervous rhythm with his fingers. He wishes he could smoke, but Rhys’ earlier reaction has him hesitant to light up in the confined space. Instead, he stews in silence. Rhys starts the engine and pulls them out onto the compound road.

Neither of them speaks to the other as they glide through the security checkpoint at the front gate, out toward the scattered settlements that have grown like clusters of mold around Atlas’ high walls. Better here, in the green, than out in the desert wastes, even if you do have a weapons manufacturer looming over your shoulder. Also, there’s no chance of an eridium mine springing up under your feet when you’re living next door to people whose lives Atlas values.

That’s a bit cynical, John admits to himself. Atlas does relocate towns before they begin mining, and almost nobody gets the skull shivers anymore. But they also aren’t very nice about it.

Rhys drives them along the thoroughfare for a while, past quaint little farms with vegetable patches and honest to god cows, with spots and brass bells and everything. John watches them graze as they pass and tries to calculate how many Atlas weapons it takes to protect a herd from a pack of skags. Enough that Rhys can afford warm milk and cookies at bedtime each night, probably.

It’s not until they’ve broken the tree line and are in the shade of the forest that Rhys finally addresses John once more.

“What do you think of Atlas?” he asks.

John looks over at him, but Rhys’ eyes haven’t strayed from the road.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s a good company, right?” Rhys says. “What I’ve built.”

“Yeah,” John says, which is an understatement. “It’s a good company.”

A faint smile crosses Rhys’ lips.

“Do you think you could do better?” he asks.

John has to process that for a second, to make sure he heard it right.

“What, me?” he asks. “CEO of Atlas?”

“Not necessarily Atlas,” Rhys says. “Your own company, maybe.”

John would be lying if he said he hadn’t thought about it. He has ideas of his own. Plans. All that money and power is undeniably attractive. Surpassing Rhys, though? Right now, John would settle for being on equal footing.

“It’s hard to imagine anyone doing better,” he says at last. “You changed the surface of the planet.”

Rhys hums.

“There’s lots of ways to do that,” he says. “Lots of ways to make money, too.

“Sure,” John agrees.

It still sounds like a pipe dream.

“Take my friend, Fiona,” Rhys starts.

John blanches, then forces himself to school his expression into one of neutrality.

Fiona is notorious at Atlas, and in the borderlands in general. She’s a vault hunter, and an associate of Rhys’, although ‘friend’ is definitely not the right word. The last time she was seen on Pandora was two years ago. She was putting a bullet in Rhys’ stomach.

“You wouldn’t know it, but she’s filthy rich,” Rhys continues, oblivious to John’s discomfort. “Vaults don’t actually have much in them, aside from monsters and eridium and headaches, but the actual hunting them down part is a more lucrative venture than you’d think. And opening them can…certainly change the surface of a planet.”

He glances upward. It’s hidden by the canopy of trees, but John knows he’s looking toward Elpis – both halves of it, floating suspended overhead like a cracked egg. Rhys clears his throat and refocuses on the road.

“You telling me I should become a vault hunter?” John asks.

“Huh? No,” Rhys says. “I’m just saying. Like, for example, how many vaults have you been in, Jack?”

“None,” John says. “Obviously. And my name is John.”

“Obviously,” Rhys echoes.

There’s a long, loaded silence.

John’s the one to break it this time.

“What’s it like?” he asks. “Inside a vault.”

“Why are we talking about vaults?” Rhys asks. He sounds annoyed

“I don’t know,” John says peevishly. Like it’s his fault they’re on the subject. “You’re the one who brought it up. That and your friend Shooty McShoots-n-Hats.”

Rhys’ hands tighten on the steering wheel. John runs a hand over his mouth and wishes he had better control over it. Most of the authority figures in his life seemed to feel that way, too, come to think of it. He opens it again to say something else – maybe about how nice Rhys’ jaw looks when it’s clenched – but is saved from further disaster by Rhys himself.

“I’ve been in two,” he says. “Three. Two and a half.”

“How can you be in half a vault?” John asks, ignoring that this isn’t at all an answer to his previous question. “One foot in and one foot out?”

“Ha, yeah,” Rhys says. “No. More like. Entering the same one twice. Sort of.”

He trails off again, clearly not intending to elaborate.

John sighs.

“Are you this purposely obtuse with everyone,” he asks sarcastically, “or am I special?”

Rhys’ gaze is torn completely from the road. He looks at John, face serious. It’s getting late in the cycle now and it’s dim in the forest, with the canopy blocking out most of the sunlight already. The shadows catch and crawl up into Rhys, burry themselves deep into the nooks and crannies, the edges of him. His skin glows pale in contrast.

“You’re special,” he says.

_Art by Rhys: [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/ricey.ball/)_

He turns to look back at the road.

John turns to look out the passenger window, and tries to calm his heartbeat back down. Again, he can’t quite determine whether he should be concerned or aroused. His fingers resume their drumming on the armrest, a steady, thoughtful beat.

It’s not long after that that they reach the boundaries of Atlas’ terraforming. The trees break suddenly, into scattered saplings and monstrous pieces of machinery, still and cold. They sit like hulking beasts, dormant for the night cycle. The light is brighter out here, where the road stretches out into desert, but the shadows are growing long. The sky is turning pungent orange. It will stay that way for another couple of hours, as Pandora slowly claws itself across the face of the universe, and then all will be thrust into dark.

Rhys drives on, but doesn’t turn the headlights on. He seems intermittently transfixed by the sky, eyes wandering up to look at the peach stained clouds every now and again. That, and Elpis. That broken rock, a shuddering mess of glowing purple dust, hanging frozen in time.

Once the tree line disappears behind them, John realizes they’ve been driving for more than an hour. He begins to grow uneasy. How much farther does Rhys intend to take him? He’d said they’d reach their destination before nightfall, but that’s still a pretty long drive.

Hopefully Angel got herself some dinner. Hopefully she’s not too worried. John closes his eyes and pictures her sitting at the piano in their living room, gently fingering the keys, as if afraid to press too hard and make a real sound.

A timid nocturne plunks its way through his head, one note at a time.

There’s a thunk and screech and Rhys curses loudly as the car spins wide. Something outside lets out a high-pitched cry. John’s eyes fly open and he scrambles to check his seatbelt.

“Shit,” Rhys says, grinding the car to a halt. “Fuck. God fucking –”

He throws the door open and gets out, leaving the car running. John snaps his seatbelt off and fumbles with the door handle. It won’t open.

“You _ son of a _ –” he growls. Rhys has locked him in.

He climbs over the console between the seats, and pauses over the driver’s side. He could just get in it and drive away, he realizes, leave Rhys behind, in the dust and the twilight.

It’s a dumb idea without foundation. As if Rhys couldn’t pull up his ECHO with his cybernetics and be airlifted out five minutes later. And why would John do that? What could he possibly get out of it? Where would he go? It’s an itch, though, an impulse that lingers under his skin. A vicious little temptation.

He gets out of the car and looks around. Rhys is a little ways back down the road, crouched over a shuddering lump in the dirt. A skag, it looks like. It’s whining lowly in distress. Rhys is watching it and doing nothing more, his face creased with distress.

“The humane thing to do would be to put it out of its misery,” John says, walking toward them.

“I don’t like killing animals,” Rhys says. “They haven’t done anything wrong.”

He’s staring down at the skag’s single visible eye. It rotates sightlessly in its socket, darting back and forth, a thin cloudy sheen forming over the yawning, black pupil. The skag is panting, too, but barely getting any air in, judging by the sharp, aborted heaving of its chest. It’ll certainly die. Slowly, probably.

“You’ve already killed it,” John says.

Rhys sighs and presses his hands against his knees, pushing himself out of his crouch.

“You’re right,” he says.

He pulls a pistol out from inside his jacket. It’s a compact thing – Atlas, of course – and sleek with either disuse or care. Care, John thinks, as Rhys pulls the trigger without hesitation.

The bang is quieter than John would’ve imagined. The skag lets out a final whimper of pain, and then goes limp.

Rhys tucks the gun away again. The holster is discreet. It’s no wonder John never noticed it before, but of course the CEO of Atlas would be carrying. He’s aware of it now. He feels, himself, bare.

“You locked me in the car,” he says, in as neutral a tone as he can manage.

“Ah, yeah, sorry about that,” Rhys says, stepping over the dead skag to stand before him. “I wasn’t sure how this whole thing was going to go. You can get seriously hurt throwing yourself out of a moving vehicle.”

“Right,” John says. “Thanks for the consideration. But most people just try to be the kind of date others aren’t desperate to escape.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Rhys says, “for the next time I’m on a date.”

John grunts, unsure whether he wants to kiss Rhys or throttle him.

He glances down.

“I think you got blood on your shoes.”

“That’s fine; it blends in. No one will notice.”

“You know a lot about that?”

“A surprising amount,” Rhys says. “Of course, some people would laugh at me for caring. A little spilled blood is to be expected in my business. But image really is everything.”

He reaches out absently and takes hold of John’s tie, gently tugging the knot straight and upward, so that it’s properly snug around his throat. John swallows against it and stands perfectly still. Underneath his shirt, his skin is alive with the feeling of Rhys’ hands on him, now smoothing out his collar, brushing unseen dust from his shoulder.

“You should invest in some hair gel,” Rhys suggests casually. “You’d look good with your hair styled back.”

“Sure, boss,” John says roughly.

Rhys looks at him for a beat longer, and then moves past him toward the car. He gets in and slams the door shut. A moment later, the headlights blink on.

Alone on the road, John feels suddenly bereft.

Then he rolls his eyes and joins Rhys. Or tries to, anyway. The passenger door is still locked. He has to rattle the handle impatiently for several seconds before Rhys finally takes the hint and hits a switch on the driver’s door console.

For what it’s worth, he doesn’t hit it again as John refastens his seatbelt. It’s not worth much.

They leave the dead skag on the road and head further out into the desert. The peaks of the rolling dunes are as orange as the sky and the valleys are tinged deep purple. Eventually, the road disappears under the sand, but Rhys keeps driving, following some predetermined course that John is not privy to.

He catches sight of his own reflection in the side mirror. His face is serious, but he doesn’t look tired - not the way he usually does, worn and aging. He looks pensive. He looks like a man on the verge of epiphany.

A loose strand of hair falls into his eyes and he brushes it aside. Rhys is right. He’d look good with his hair styled back.

Long miles pass. They encounter nothing after the skag. At last, beneath an enormous outcropping of sandstone, Rhys draws the car to a slow halt. He turns the engine off. An eerie silence descends.

“It’s better if we walk from here,” he says.

_ Great, _ John thinks. _ Walking in the desert. _

He clicks his seatbelt off and shifts toward the door, but stops when he realizes that Rhys hasn’t moved. He’s frozen in his seat, staring into space.

“Hey, are we going or what?” John asks. “I’ve got shit to do back home, kiddo. Like make sure my thirteen-year-old takes her vitamins and –”

“Say that again,” Rhys interrupts.

“What?” John asks. “I’ve gotta go home and take care of my daughter?”

“No. The other thing.” Rhys’ voice is quiet, but firm.

John replays the sentence in his head, trying to figure out what Rhys could mean. His mind snags on it suddenly, a tenterhook that pulls and stretches the whole thing tense and rigid. He swallows, and then says, “Kiddo.”

At first, Rhys doesn’t respond. He continues to stare out past the steering wheel at the hood ornament on the car – the shining red ‘A’ – or beyond it, into the desert, seeing something John can’t even begin to guess. Then he swivels in his seat and pushes himself halfway over the console separating them, leaning fully into John’s space.

For a moment, John thinks Rhys is going to kiss him.

_ Finally_, he thinks, and tilts his head up into it.

He’s wrong.

Like a snake striking, Rhys’ hands are around his throat. John chokes out a gasp of surprise and grapples at Rhys’ wrists, trying to pry them off. Rhys leans in further, pushing John into the car seat. It folds back, and Rhys clambers on top of him, fingers squeezing.

The last of the sunlight catches on his cybernetic arm and refracts, casting an opalescent halo across Rhys’ face. His mouth is parted slightly, pupils blown wide, the cybernetic eye spinning slowly in its socket. He looks ethereal, beautiful, and John hates him for it.

The metal hand should feel stronger than the flesh one, but it doesn’t. They’re both like steel. John can’t get them loose. Spots dance in front of his eyes and he bucks, kicking his legs up as he tries to drag in ugly, sucking breaths.

“Shh, shh, shhhh,” Rhys says from over him. His face is devoid of emotion. “Easy.”

“F…fuck…you,” John gasps out, digging his nails into Rhys’ hands.

“I’m not going to kill you,” Rhys says. The ‘yet’ is implied and, anyway, John doesn’t believe him. “I just want to see what this looks like. Give me a second.”

John glares at him and considers spitting in his face but can’t muster the strength. It’s likely all he’d do is dribble saliva down his chin.

“I’ve wanted to see this for a long time, Jack,” Rhys says dreamily. One of his thumbs rubs a circle into John’s trachea. It’s almost tender. “Is that wrong?”

_ Yes, _John thinks furiously. _ My name’s John. _

There’s a ringing in his ears. He closes his eyes and grits his teeth and waits for it to end.

Rhys lets go.

John sucks in one gasping breath, and then another. The pressure over him eases as Rhys crawls back off, but John barely notices, concentrating on nothing other than getting oxygen back to his brain. He coughs against the sudden rush of air. It grates at his throat.

“Your face started to turn purple,” Rhys says. “His wouldn’t have. Because of the mask.”

“You’re psychotic,” John croaks out.

Rhys does not respond.

John opens his eyes again and shakily sits up. Some dumb quip runs through his head, something about not getting into cars with strange men, but he feels too fuzzy to get it straight. He looks at Rhys, wary of him. He’s sitting easily back in his place behind the steering wheel, totally unruffled.

“You want to know something?” he asks casually, as if he hadn’t been strangling John a moment earlier.

John rubs at his neck with one trembling hand and says nothing.

Rhys eyes him, then leans slowly closer. Bizarrely, John thinks, again, that Rhys is about to kiss him. But all he does is reach out with one hand and pull the cigarettes from John’s front shirt pocket.

He takes one for himself, and then offers one to John, who stares blankly in response. Rhys shrugs. He lights his cigarette with a snap of his fingers and a spark from the metal, then tucks the pack back into his own suit jacket, inside the breast pocket. A moment later, the car fills with the thick stench of tobacco.

“You remind me of someone I used to know,” Rhys says. “You look just like him.”

“Jack, right?” John rasps.

Rhys’ lips quirk.

“Right,” Rhys says. “_Jack_.”

“He your lover or something?” John asks.

Rhys pauses. He blinks at John, visibly thrown.

“What makes you say that?” He sounds baffled.

“Well, boss, I don’t fucking know,” John says. “Half the time I can’t tell whether you’re trying to kill me or get in my pants.”

“…Does it really seem that way?”

Rhys takes a drag from his cigarette and breathes out a long rope of smoke, looking troubled.

“No, we weren’t lovers,” he says after a moment. “We tried to kill each other. He lost and I won. That’s all.”

“So it’s guilt.”

Rhys laughs.

“No,” he says. “He deserved to die, and in worse ways than what he got. It’s just – I wish he was still alive, and I can’t figure out why.”

He looks askance, and John feels a sudden stab of rage.

_ This whole time_, he thinks, _ he’s been looking at me and seeing someone else. _

Fuck that.

“Was there a point to this road trip, or were you just looking for somewhere scenic to try out erotic asphyxiation?” John snaps.

“Oh, right,” Rhys says. “No, there was a point. I just got distracted.”

He holds the cigarette between his lips and opens the car door, getting out. John pinches the bridge of his nose and takes a few more careful breaths. They still feel heavy, thick, but they do the job.

_ This is insane_, he tells himself. _ This man is going to kill me over a memory. _

But there’s nowhere else to go, nothing else to do. He opens the passenger door – unlocked this time – and gets out as well.

“You planning to tell me what the point actually is?” John asks, taking long strides to catch up with Rhys as he climbs to the top of a hill.

Their feet sink into the sand a little, leaving a trail of footprints like breadcrumbs back toward the car. The shadows slink into them and pool there.

“Didn’t I?” Rhys asks. He sounds genuinely surprised.

“No,” John says, annoyed.

Rhys hums. “We’re collecting Mr. Hoffman.”

John’s steps falter to a halt. He gapes at the back of Rhys’ head.

“Is something wrong?” Rhys asks when he notices that John has stopped.

“Why?” John asks. “Why are you bothering with him?”

“Because he tried to steal ten million dollars from me.”

“But he didn’t,” John says. “He screwed up. And why go personally? Why bring me along?”

Rhys stops at last, at the hill’s highest point. He turns around, one hand in his coat pocket, the other holding the cigarette. Even in the dust, he stands like a king. Not like a man wearing the air of a king, but like a king, who must remain a king no matter where he stands. Behind him, the burnt orange caps of the hills are the blazing waves of a burning ocean, hot and brilliant and consuming. A great, fiery kingdom.

_Art by Kelsey: [Twitter](https://twitter.com/everkinged)_

“I have this theory I want to test,” he says.

“What’s that?” John asks with trepidation.

“If I tell you, it might skew the results.”

A curling string of smoke twists up from his raised hand and into the breeze. The burning ember seems to grow brighter as the gloaming shifts and wanes from pink into thin blue. Soon, the sky will reach the point where you almost can’t tell if it’s nighttime, or just a very dark afternoon.

“You realize how ominous that sounds, right?” John asks.

Rhys shrugs. “It’s the truth.” He glances over his shoulder, toward a cluster of boulders not far off. “You can go back to the car, if you want, but it seems like a waste, after coming all this way. At least come say hello to Mr. Hoffman with me. I’m curious to see what he’s made of Pandora. She’s not friendly.”

He takes another drag of nicotine, and then begins his descent down the hillside. John watches him go for a moment, the end of his cigarette like a quavering, red star, slowly falling into the cupped hands of the desert. Then John follows.

He’s curious, too.

John still remembers when Mathias started working at Atlas, a weedy little intern with a head for numbers and none for social niceties. He was dead useful for trash work, the unbearable coding jobs nobody else wanted to do. That was why John took him in. Anyone who can handle that must be good for something, he figured. The rest of it could be taught.

That had been a massive overestimation of Mathias’ abilities.

He had problems with authority, but not in a clever way that makes you into an authority yourself. He was snide to his superiors, condescending to those beneath him, and generally unpleasant to be around. John hadn’t minded that. Matty was a funny fucker, and he seemed to like John just fine – seemed to think he was the only one at Atlas who respected him. But then the funny stopped being so funny, because he was – this really is the crux of the issue – stupid as hell.

He never picked up a damn thing John tried to teach him, never grew an inch from the man he was when he first entered the company. All he did was stagnate and complain. John grew exasperated. And, thick as he was, eventually even Matty was bound to realize that John wasn’t going to hand him the keys to the kingdom for mediocre efforts and spotty success.

The irony of it, John thinks, is that he had been planning on firing Mathias, anyway. Embezzlement or no. At least then he could’ve left the company with dignity, and not gone running off to hide in a cave in a desert with a piece of worn, corrugated metal covering the entrance.

This is the entirety of Mathias’ hideout. The makeshift door has ‘SCRM’ scrawled across it in big, black letters. John thinks it’s fairly telling that he’s not sure it was already like that when Matty found it.

Rhys comes to a halt in front of the metal sheet, looking amused. He glances back at John.

“What do you think?” he asks. “Should I knock?”

John rolls his eyes.

“Come on out, Matty!” John yells. “Play time’s over! Time to pay the piper!”

There’s no answer.

Rhys rolls his neck. He drops his cigarette onto the ground and grinds it out with his heel. Then he reaches into his jacket and pulls out his gun.

“Hang on,” John starts nervously, then stops.

Rhys is holding the gun out for him to take.

“No,” John says.

“He could attack us,” Rhys says, lightly. “If it was up to me, I’d shoot him. But he’s your employee. It’s your call.”

“I’m not gonna shoot anyone,” John says.

“Sure,” Rhys agrees.

The gun stays suspended between them.

“Let me put it this way,” Rhys says. “He’s your mess; your responsibility.”

John scowls, but takes the gun.

“I’m not shooting him,” he says again.

Rhys ignores him. He takes several steps backward and stoops to pick a fist-sized rock up off the ground. He straightens, then lobs it hard at the metal sheet. An enormous clang echoes out across the desert hills.

John winces and hopes they don’t attract anything with more teeth than a disgruntled ex-employee. Rhys seems unconcerned.

The metal sheet wavers momentarily, then scrapes noisily along the side of the cave as it tips, and sends up a cloud of dust when it collapses at last. Mathias Hoffman lunges out of it with a roar.

John reflexively brings his fist up and punches Matty in the gut. He sees Rhys move his lips in a silent ‘oof.’

Matty staggers and holds his stomach with both his arms.

He looks a little ragged. His clothes are dirty and torn. His lips have chapped and cracked to the point of bleeding - he clearly hasn’t had water in a long time. Frankly, it’s remarkable he made it this far out. It must have been tempting to stop in the green shelter of the terraformed forest, but even Matty would’ve known how closely those woods are monitored.

It’s plain how unprepared he was to survive in the desert. Another couple of cycles and he probably would’ve died with no help at all. This feels like wasted effort. Again, John wonders why Rhys is bothering.

“You bastard,” Matty wheezes at him. “Come to screw me over one last time, huh?” He spits a dry, brown gob in the dirt at John’s feet.

“Shut the hell up, Matty,” John says. His anger has been on a low simmer since his altercation with Rhys in the car, but it flares again now, fresh and hot. “I bent over backward to keep your ass out of the fire, time and again, and you never gave me anything worth shit in return.”

“Yeah right!” Matty snaps. “It was always, ‘Do what I say and you’ll move up in no time,’ and ‘After this project there might be a promotion,’ over and over, but it was all bullshit! The whole time you were only looking down on me, thinking you were better just because you’re a couple rungs up the ladder!”

“I _ am _ better than you,” John says. “That’s how the ladder _ works_.”

A few feet to John’s right, Rhys laughs

“I’ve been wondering what you saw in him,” he says. “But I get it now. He was just a tool.”

He seems satisfied with this conclusion. He looks at John in expectation, like a child waiting to be rewarded for a right answer, waiting to be praised. He looks at John, and the full weight of it plucks some secret chord in John’s ego. The whole of him thrums.

“That’s about the gist of it,” he says.

Rhys beams, strangely pleased.

“Look, are you ready to come back to Atlas now?” John asks of Matty. “Got it all out of your system? If you are, maybe we can finally put this all to rest. It doesn’t have to be any worse than you’ve already made it, Matty. I’m trying to do you a favor.”

“Fuck you,” Matty snarls. “’A favor.’ You brought a gun. You brought the CEO.”

“Hi,” Rhys says, waggling his fingers.

“You bastard,” Matty says to John. As a statement, it’s not inaccurate, but it is starting to get irritating. “I did everything you told me to!”

“Yeah, but you did it badly,” John says.

“I did every last shitty project you gave me!”

“That was your _ job_.”

“I sucked up to you. I did your _ errands_! I picked up your laundry! I even checked in on your weird daughter!”

As if the words are a spell, every muscle in John’s body goes rigid.

“Here’s some free advice from me to you,” John says, keeping his voice deceptively light. “Maybe this time you’ll take it. When you’re this neck deep in your own shit, Matty?” John’s fingers flex around the grip of Rhys’s pistol. “Don’t talk about my daughter.”

Matty’s lip curls.

“You know, I used to wonder about her,” he says. “She’s so skittish. So quiet all the time. I always thought it was kind of freaky, but now I know what kind of person you really are, and I think I understand.”

John’s heart thumps in his ears, louder and louder with each beat, until the sound of it fuzzes out into white noise and nothingness and heat.

“Matty,” John says, “you really are the dumbest asshole alive.”

He reaches forward and grabs Matty by the side of his head. Matty jerks back in surprise, but John is faster, bringing the gun up and slamming it across Matty’s face. Matty lets out a cry as his nose crunches beneath the force of the hit.

“For once in your worthless life,” John says, “listen. To what. I fucking. Tell you!”

He punctuates each statement with another pistol whip.

Matty crumples under the blows, his nose gushing blood and one eye clenched shut. John lets him fall. His cheek is split, likely broken, and the whole left side of his face is a mess of red. John can hear him start to sob. His cries are tinny, high.

John eyes him. He’s pathetic. For a long, heady moment, John revels in it, gratified.

_ Should bash your fucking brains in_, he thinks. _ For talking about my daughter. _

There’s a faint tremor in his skin, an unsatisfied thirst for violence. Insatiable. He feels it growing. An old, familiar animal, rearing its heavy head and shaking the dust from its mane.

John wishes, abruptly, that he could have a cigarette. But Rhys still has his pack, tucked away in his tailored breast pocket. He grinds his teeth and takes a step backward.

“Are we done yet?” he asks.

Matty shifts and groans. His lips are still moving.

“…abou’ her mom, too,” he’s mumbling through the blood and broken cartilage. “Couldn’t get away fas’ enough, could she?”

The tremor becomes, for a moment, a convulsion, and the hand holding the gun jerks at John’s side.

“Shut up,” he says.

“Go on, Jack,” Rhys says. “Shoot him.”

John stares at Matty, quivering on the ground. He raises the gun, and then turns and trains it on Rhys.

“My name,” John spits, “is _ John_."

There is something in Rhys’ expression. A gleam. A snag of shadow and light. John has a nasty feeling like he’s fallen for some kind of trick.

Before he can react, though, Matty is scrambling to his feet. There’s a pistol in his hand, too.

_ Where the fuck did this moron get a gun? _John thinks, and it’s all he has time for before his own wrist jerks back toward Matty and his finger twitches and there’s a loud bang in the desert night.

Matty makes a wet, gurgling sound. He gasps and chokes around the bullet wound in his chest. He seems, oddly enough, surprised.

“You goddamned _ idiot! _” John says, gun still frozen outstretched in front of him. “You goddamned…!”

Matty folds inward and slumps to his knees. He stares silently up at John, still somehow shocked by this turn of events, as if until this very moment he didn’t really realize that an action could have consequences. Then, like a domino, he topples sideways. The sand stains dark and red.

“I was going to let you live!” John shouts down at him. “What is _ wrong _ with you?”

_Art by Rory: [Tumblr ](https://roryartdot.tumblr.com)| [Twitter](https://twitter.com/RoryArtdot) _

Matty does not respond. Like this, crumpled in on himself, he resembles the skag - a dead animal on the side of the road.

Rhys walks over. He gazes dispassionately down at the body of Matthias Hoffman, ex-employee; the man John has just killed.

“That’s about what I expected,” he says.

He reaches out and gently tugs the gun from John’s fingers. John lets him, watching Matty’s blood pool in the dirt. Rhys tucks it back into its holster, and bends over to pick up the one that Matty dropped. He examines it for a second. Then he straightens, pulls his arm back, and throws it hard, off into the dark.

“Crappy bandit pistol,” he says after it.

_ I should have shot him when I had the chance_, John thinks. But he doesn’t know that he ever really did.

Something wet catches the dim light as Rhys moves, a jagged tear of dark stars across his front. It’s blood, John realizes. There was spray from the shot, not at all like the clean bullet Rhys put in the skag’s head. Some of it must have gotten on John, too. If he looks down, he’ll see it – a streak of stark red across the garish white of his shirt. A stain. He doesn’t look.

There must be some finesse to this shooting people business, he thinks. He’ll remember that.

“Have you ever killed someone before?” Rhys asks.

John thinks of dark bruises pressed deep into pale skin. He thinks of nails like claws, scratching, ripping, drawing blood. He thinks of a quiet, trembling nocturne, and the steady tap, tap, tap of a finger keeping time.

“Yes,” he says, hoarsely.

“I thought so,” Rhys says. “Not many though, right? I can tell. That’s okay – you’ll get better. I was terrible at it, at first.” He touches his own stomach, right above his hipbone. “Fiona still sucks, but that’s because she doesn’t practice.”

“There’s something wrong with you, Rhys Strongfork,” John says.

In the full dark of night, Rhys’ yellow eye is like the sun.

“Yeah,” he says. “It’s the same thing that’s wrong with you. Or it will be, anyway.”

“Is that what you’re doing?” John asks lowly. That same rage is simmering in him still, boiling over, billowing out. It throws its head back and roars. “Trying to turn me into him?”

“No,” Rhys says. “I just wanted to be there when it finally happened.”

He leans forward a little, tilts his head to one side, and John can see now, with sudden clarity, that Rhys isn’t going to kiss him. He’s never going to kiss John. He’s waiting for John to kiss him first.

So John does.

He kisses Rhys forcefully, digs in and takes command, pulls a surprised gasp out of Rhys and then suffocates it in the same breath. John wants to erase Jack. He wants to replace his memory with himself, to burn Jack out of Rhys completely, obliterate him into nothingness, nothingness, dust. To consume.

Then Rhys groans and leans into him with eagerness, and John realizes that this isn’t right. Teeth and power and dominance – this is exactly the kiss Jack would give. All this does is make his memory stronger.

So John eases off. He forces his lips to be gentle. At first Rhys struggles against it, bites at John, tries to antagonize him back into the harsh collision of mouths. John persuades him. He brushes his knuckles against the side of Rhys’ face with tenderness, cups the small of Rhys’ back with an open palm, does not push, merely rests it there, suggests. Rhys sighs against him, and is convinced.

_ There_, John thinks with spiteful satisfaction. _ Just like that. _

He breaks the kiss and pulls away.

“Stop trying to make me your nemesis,” he demands.

Rhys looks across at him, lashes lowered, cheeks dusted with red. His eyes are still sharp.

“Quid pro quo,” he says back.

A favor for a favor.

“By the way,” Rhys continues, before John can even begin to fathom what that means, “I think I’d like to promote you.”

“To what?” John asks.

“There’s no job title that’s apocalyptic enough,” Rhys hums. “But for now, I’ll call you my personal assistant. How about it?”

John reaches for Rhys’ neck.

At the last second, his hands change paths. He dips a finger into Rhys’ collar and pulls it aside, revealing the full circle of his tattoo. There’s a small dot to one side, he now sees, like a moon in orbit around a planet, or a planet in orbit around the sun. Or something else, but something fixed, and turning. Unfaltering. Inevitable.

“You can call me whatever you want,” John says, “so long as it’s not Jack.”

Rhys smiles. It’s a baby-faced smile, mild and sweet. Disarming.

“Okay, handsome,” he says.

John drops his hands and fixes Rhys’ tie. He runs his thumb down the length of it and feels the damp spots of blood that have blended in with the fabric, invisible to the naked eye.

“Yeah,” he says. “That’s much better.”

END

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats.
> 
> A huge, huge thank you to the artists who made such beautiful works for this story!!!! They all turned out so amazing and I'm really grateful to them all... Please go support them and their work! Links to their pages, in order of appearance, are:
> 
> Jack: [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/jacks_baptism_of_blood) | [Tumblr](https://jack-baptismofblood.tumblr.com)  
Rhys: [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/ricey.ball/)  
Kelsey: [Twitter](https://twitter.com/everkinged)  
Rory: [ Tumblr](https://roryartdot.tumblr.com) | [Twitter](https://twitter.com/RoryArtdot)
> 
> And an equally huge thank you to [Sarah](https://twitter.com/srahhh) for betaing!!!  
You can find me on twitter at [@ineffmoth](https://twitter.com/ineffmoth). Please let me know what you thought!


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